Weather XML Help

[abnrange]

Sorry if this thread shows up a few time - Had problems posting.

Anyhow, attached is an app I found in the forums. It the Weather Project - I added my key and tested - nothing happens. I tested without the key, which I think is suppose to work from reading the thread. Same result does not work. Is there something missing like a plugin? tried searching for an XML plugin - AMS 7 has then built it!???


Thanks

[jassing]

yea; doesn't work for me either; but it doesn't complain about a missing plugin.
I'd use any of hte other weather apps over trying to fix this -- this has very limited abilities -- and the weather channel does not update "real time"

[abnrange]

What other weather apps. I was looking to easily populate current weather with image in my app - Something without advertisments. Any suggestions? Thanks

[jassing]

Well; if you want to add weather to your current app; that is a bit different than just "getting the weather".

I had produced a COM dll years ago that fetched data from WeatherBug (i wrote it becuase weatherbug was known for spyware) -- while it died a slow death by very low "payment to support" ratio.... The concept is easy.

Look at "weatheroryou.com" -- you can look at hte websites by location and the data -- and then just do an HTTP.Download() or HTTP.Submit() to grab some html -- then parse off the data. Once you "see" the data in the html; you'll see how easy it is to parse.

[abnrange]

Thanks for the quick response!

You lost me at parse the data. Do you have an example? Can I purchase your COM dll?

[jassing]

Most websites that post "data" in a regular form use something like (if not exactly) a table. So you just read out the table elements. XML is just another word for HTML; it's just 'data driven' rather than 'attribute driven'.

The weatherbug COM object has long since been abandoned - just wasn't worth the "how do I use a COM object" support calls I was getting for a shareware application that I asked very little for -- ultimately I abandoned it because the shareware model is flawed....


Just open a weather site -- and then "view source" and look for the markers you want (like current temp -- the value like "43c" etc) and look at how you can parse it out.. use string.find() etc.

[abnrange]

Thanks - I will give that a try!

[abnrange]

jassing,

How would I parse the current weather from the attached file?
How would you make it display current weather in AMS?
Would I use a label or paragraph?

Sorry, I 'm still learning! Any help would be great. Thanks again

[jassing]

Giving it a VERY quick review -- you would put it in string; then use String.Find() to look for <b class="obsTextA">
Between that and the next </b> is "Cloudy"

Now look for <b class="obsTempTextA"> Get between that and </b> and you get: 46.8

look for <b class="obsTextA">Cloudy</b> a 2nd time; and then pull out what's between it and </b> and you get:

<b class="obsTextA">Feels Like<br>40&#176;F</b>
so now pull out everything that's between < and > and you get:
Feels LIke 40(Degrees) F

so in total you can get (very easily) Cloudy, 46.8 but feels like 40 detrees F

once you get this simple bit; you can see other paterns in the website looking at random zipcodes -- they rarely change the formats.

[abnrange]

Jassing,

Remember I'm a newbie - I looked at the help in AMS on strings - I 'm so what confused.

Do you have a sample on how to string the data? I 'm a visual kind of person.
Thanks

[Ulrich]

Here is an application where you can see how it can be done. There are always different ways to achieve similar results.

Note that I fetch the data directly from the web site before I display the current temperature in the demo application.

Hope this helps.

[abnrange]

Thanks jassing - Now that I can see the code, I have a better understanding.


Thanks again

[abnrange]

One more question - Is it possible to load an image depending on weather? If its raining it would load a rain image etc... I did not see where in the source code to parse that data. I see alot of images nothing specific to weather.


Thanks again

[abnrange]

jassing- I think I found where the image loads from
http://image.weather.com/web/common/...6.gif?12122006

Would it go like this???
string.find (http://image.weather.com/web/common/...gif?12122006);
image = http://image.weather.com/web/common/...6.gif?12122006
Image.Load(image)

Or what that load the same gif everytime?

Sorry, still confused!

[Ulrich]

Here is an altered version of my former example which shows the temperature and the image corresponding to the weather at the chosen location.

Ulrich